October 15, 2021 • 39 mins
After marrying and having three children, Ada dove back into the world of poetical science, continuing her correspondence with Charles Babbage as he tried to garner support for his ambitious, expensive analytical engine. In the second part of this two-part series, the guys explore how Ada's work -- and prescience -- created a profound legacy that remains with us in the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:28):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer,
Max Williams. Add a very special shout out to our
guest super producer returning again, the one, the only Mr Lowell, Brilliante.
I've been your your nal. And this is part two
of a two part series, isn't it. It is indeed
(00:52):
part two of Ada Lovelace and her journey into mathematics
and computation and you know, standard bearing, trail blazing, all
that good stuff. Where where do we leave off, ben,
if I'm not mistaken, She had just kind of returned
to the fray of of of computer science after a
(01:13):
brief stint in the domestic realm. Yes, after just a
few months after the birth of her third child back
in eighteen thirty nine, Aida decided to dive back into
the world of numerousy and the world of mathematics. And
it's interesting because we mentioned in part one. Will pause,
(01:35):
everybody listen to part one. Do do do Do Do
Do Do Do do do and you're back. So in
part one we're still here in part one. Uh, she
met the man who would become her mentor, Charles Babbage,
and just before she got married in eighteen thirty five
she got married, So a year before then, in eighteen
(01:56):
thirty four, Babbage had finally and to mess around with
something he called not the difference machine, but something he
called an analytical engine. This is the old trope you
might hear of punch cards being used in the first computers, right,
that's right. UM. It was the earliest form of kind
(02:20):
of large mainframe type computer systems that continue to use
punch card systems well into the eighties. I believe, like
you know, big massive UM room filling systems that use
these punch cards to uh instruct the computer on what
to do. UM. I'm a little hazy on exactly how
(02:40):
that works. It's all kind of magic to me and
in some ways, but essentially the punch cards are the instructions.
In this situation, it was very rudimentary UM tasks and
computations that could multiply and divide numbers UM and other
more simplistic data related tasks using these punch cards as
(03:01):
the programming instructions. UM really quickly. But do you remember
back in probably the nineties, maybe the early to mid nineties,
there used to be a chain of computer stores called
babbage Is, was it? You know, always thinking about that
was turn remember if they were computer stores or music stores?
And I'm pretty sure you're right there, Uh they were
computer stores, if I'm not mistaken. Babbage Is ultimately became
(03:27):
game Stop. Babbage Is was the initial um, you know concept,
and then it gradually uh mutated into the game Stop
and movie Stopped and all of the various stops. Um.
But but I might be mistaken, but I think that's right.
It was a very popular chance of stores in the
eighties and nineties, but named after Charles Babbage. I just
(03:47):
always thought it was a funny word when I was
a kid. Didn't founding partner of that or one of
the early investors was Ross Pero, which is a deep
cut for a lot of people. He was one of
the he was one of the politicians in recent US
history who actually got close to being a member of
(04:07):
or candidate for viable third political party spoiler it didn't happen. No,
And he was also one of the you know, more
fledgling candidates that um was quite fun in his um
portrayal on Saturday Night Live. I think it was Dana
Carvey that did Ross Pero and he did the Whole
Life Canna fanish Cana, fantis cana, fanish cana, fanish chap. Anyway,
(04:30):
it was a thing, um, but it's true. So Babbage
at this point has started to develop this system called
the Analytical engine. Um. Initially it was just a concept.
It was these sketches of this massive machine that literally
used you know, mechanical pieces, mechanical components like costs very
much so uh. And again they filled up rooms or
(04:54):
would ultimately go into Philip rooms. What it would become
of this lovelace was essentially the acting as a consultant
on this project. She seemed to understand the idea behind
it or the potential behind it, maybe even more so
than Babbage himself. Yeah, and this is a theme that
we saw earlier in part one of this series. She
(05:16):
saw the potential for uh, for this to be a
representation of what she called poetical science, which goes back
to the earlier conflict with her mother about you know,
math versus poetry. Please don't let my daughter turn into
Lord Byron, because he's you know, kind of out there
(05:37):
so Babbage goes to Turin to promote his work, to
promote his ideas, and while he's promoting this, he realizes
he needs a lot of financial support to make this
trip happen. And Lovelace had already served as the primary
interpreter of these drawing board ideas essentially, and to be clear,
(06:00):
it's the building of the machine that requires a lot
of money, so this is this is kind of a
pitch trip for him as well. That's where he meets
a mathematician with the wonderful name Luigi Fererico Menabrea, and
this guy says, all right, your ideas check out, Charlie,
(06:21):
I am gonna. I'm going to write a paper about
this machine. And the paper gets published in October two
in a Swiss journal. Lovelace translates it from French, and
then while she's translating, she also adds her own notes.
And the paper itself that this guy Luigi writes is
about eight thousand words long, not bad, but the translation
(06:46):
and the commentary that Lovelace creates comes in at about
twenty thousand words, and Charles Pappage is saying, the notes
of the Countess of Lovelace extend to about three times
the length of the original memoir. And uh, he's again
very very impressed with the quality of her thought and
(07:06):
her scholarship. Yeah, it's true, and he certainly sees that
in her. And despite you know, it being a very
chauvinistic and patriarchal world, you know, the society in general,
but also just the idea that men were the only
people that had ideas worth paying attention to. UM. And
you needed to get this Luigi Federico Montabrea to co
(07:29):
sign on it. It wasn't enough for Lovelace to have
done it, even though she obviously could have done it
herself and clearly massively improved upon Um Montabree's ideas, UM
by a significant margin. UM. But her notes were published,
you know, our translation and the notes were published in
eighteen forty three, UM. And according to Lovelace, you know,
(07:49):
scholars and historians, this was her most important contribution to
the burgeoning field of computer science, which really wasn't even
they weren't even calling it that. Actually are are good
friend Alex Williams, who composed our theme. His father, UM
and mother are both computer scientists, and I briefly was
(08:11):
talking to his dad about Lovelace UM and he just
mentioned how you know, they were still using a punch
card systems when he was coming up in you know,
the computer science world, and how early on there was
actually a programming language that was named after Lovelace. It
was called Ada that was used by military UM computer
scientists for military systems. But that you know, like similar
(08:34):
with the whole Hidden Figures film, This like group of
women that were very responsible for kind of cracking a
lot of the science behind UM space travel, but we're
largely relegated to kind of the shadows since the name.
And this is very much the case for Lovely. She
definitely didn't get her do until much much much later UM,
but was clearly one of the most important figures in
(08:55):
the development of this technology, more so even maybe than
the guy who kind of envisioned it. Yeah, and quick
note this will be if for any fellow ridiculous historians
who are also fans of etymology. The original down computer
described a person, not a machine from the sixteen forties,
one who calculates or a reckon er, which I always thought,
(09:17):
I always thought was so fascinating. You're right there, she's
working against tremendous misogyny, she said earlier. In fact, her
translation in her notes when they're published in eighteen forty three,
the authorship is attributed to just a series of initials A, A, L.
And and this is this is kind of a this
(09:38):
kind of a kick in the pants because it is
still considered one of her greatest contributions to to the field.
And she walks through not just the possibilities of how
it could work, but she also walks through the context
leading to its creation. And she specifically shouts out the
(10:00):
Jacquard loom, which was a silk weaving machine and it
could create images using a chain of punched cards and lovelace.
How poetically scientific is this? She says, Look, folks, this
engine that Babbage has made is doing the same thing,
but it's weaving mathematical problems. It's weaving patterns. They're just
(10:23):
nu miracle. She also wrote how it could how it
could work in a specific case test, like, here's an
example of how you would use these punch cards to
create a long sequence. And this outline that she that
she thought up, that she created this is considered to
(10:43):
be the very first computer program, and and she has
this beautiful line where she says, the science of operations,
as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of
itself and has its own abstract truth and value. Chef's kiss. Oh, indeed,
just back to the Jacquard loom really quickly that was
(11:03):
developed by Joseph Mulley Jacquard Um. And to me, this
is a really great way to kind of understand somewhat
how punch cards work. Uh, you know, I think it
was clearly a next level use of this technology when
it started to be used for more difficult you know,
algorithms and mathematical equations solving and things like that. But
(11:25):
it's sort of almost like a player piano or a
music box, where like, if you have a music box,
you create the programming or the instructions for what individual
musical times will be plucked to create a melody by
punching out sequences of notes like on a scale on
a staff that is on a roll of paper, in
the same way that a player piano. You feed these
(11:46):
roles of punched out paper into it, and that blocks
the keys from being played when they shouldn't be played
and allows it to play the keys when they are
supposed to be played. So to me, that's sort of
like a rudimentary understanding of the basis of how punch
cards work. But any computer science folks out there, please
correct me if that's absolutely off base. But that's kind
of how I understand it. But she wanted to take
(12:07):
it even further. Uh. She wanted to weave what would
are called Bernoulli numbers, the sequences of Bernoulli numbers. Um.
And that's exactly what she did. Uh. And that's what
that quote is describing, and that would have been considered
the first computer program. You're absolutely right, ben Um and
s Singer. Uh in his biography of Love Lace wrote,
(12:28):
Ada here is seeking to do nothing less than invent
the science of computing and separate it from the science
of mathematics. What she calls the science of operations is
indeed in effect computing at a time where they didn't
have a name for it. Uh, didn't even understand the
full ramifications of what this would ultimately be, you know,
the Pandora's box for good or bad that this would
(12:50):
open up. She was very aware of that very high
level stuff that wouldn't even come into play for many,
many years, much more so I think than Babbage himself. Yeah,
a language of the world, a language that describes reality,
she she said, so to put a fine point on it.
At one point, she writes, this science constitutes the language
(13:14):
through which alone we can adequately express the great facts
of the natural world. So this is figuring out how
to how to translate reality, and that's that's an amazing thing.
At that level, we are getting to what Arthur C.
(13:34):
Clark famously refers to in his quote about the difference
between science and magic. Right, any science sufficiently advanced may
as well be magic. And this is really what she's doing.
If you look at something called the Ada Initiative, which
(13:55):
is a nonprofit organization that arranges conferencing and training programs
to elevate women working in STEM, you'll see the executive director,
Valerie Aurora, says that Babbage possessed this technical ingenuity, this inventiveness,
but in his partnership with Lovelace, she is the one
(14:17):
who propelled his invention into the world of computing, because
she was the one to see the true potential. There's
an excellent article that talks about this Ada Lovelace First
Tech Visionary by Betsy Murray's which is in The New
York Or from and unlike sad to say, many other
(14:41):
male inventors or scientists, Babbage had absolutely no problem hyping
and supporting Lovelace and her her work and her ability
as a computer scientists. He called her Lady Ferry, He
called her the Enchantress of numbers, and Aida leaned into this.
(15:01):
She once called herself the high Priestess of Babbage's engine,
which is cool. It sounds like it could be really
fun to be a fly on the wall in their conversations.
I agree, and I think it's neat. You know, we're
gonna see this relationship sort of changes a little bit.
And it does appear Babbage and may have been difficult
in some other respects, but he was pretty progressive given
(15:22):
the time and all of the you know, other stuff
that we've been talking about, the kind of patriarchal societal
model and um, all of that stuff and the misogyny
that existed. But um, you know, it's not like he
pressed for her. He definitely associated her with these uh
improvements in the paper, and he wasn't trying to like
brush her aside. But I don't know, Uh, we'll just see,
(15:45):
let's see how things progress. Um, So Lovelace does become
fascinated with the potential for the analytical engine and these algorithms,
which I don't even know if they were calling them
that at the time, but it essentially is what we
would call algorithms today, these pieces of code that are
designed to do like a particular task. Um. Unfortunately, she
(16:06):
didn't continue working with Babbage or wasn't more involved. She
was sort of relegated to the sidelines a little bit. Um.
I think that's maybe where I'm what I'm getting at
is that he definitely listened to her. He hyped her up,
and he you know, gave her a megaphone and a
platform to kind of try out some of the ideas,
but it ultimately was his thing. Right. Yeah, this is
(16:28):
where we see an unfortunate complication in their collaboration. So
in August of eighteen forty three, Lovelace writes a letter
to Babbage and she says, hey, why don't you let
me help you by putting me in charge of anything
related to the analytical project that requires us influencing important people,
(16:54):
kind of like, let me go talk to these folks,
let me go help get some approval, some funding, get
some other assistance. And this was a pretty long letter.
Historians still don't know why, but Babbage, in very terse
terms rejected her offer. You'll see that the best guests
(17:15):
people tend to have is that he approved of her
work in publicizing his engine, but with this particular project
he felt uncomfortable for some reason about letting her be
involved in the project itself. Does that mean maybe he
thought she might outshine him. Did his misogyny come into play?
(17:37):
I don't know. But ever since that point, due impart
to this conflict they had, Oh they stayed friends, by
the way. Part of yeah, conflict they had, you'll find
some folks say that she was not a programmer at all,
but I tend to disagree. Well, yeah, it's interesting. I
think maybe if she had been more involved in the
(17:59):
project itself instead of just kind of relegated to interpreting
and adding some more clarity around that original paper, then
I think she would have become more influential in actual programming.
She certainly had the chops and the imagination, which is
really what that poetical science concept is all about, is
kind of combining those two things. Um, it was Babbage
(18:22):
himself that created the first what essentially could be called
the first operating system or operating instructions uh for the system. Um,
she may well have done a better job. You know,
it seems like it. But I understand what you're saying,
been and I kind of agree that maybe he was
worried that, um, she might have stolen his thunder a
little bit. Um. The thing is not to beat the
(18:45):
dead horse here. She is the one who sort of
understood the potential for this stuff more than Babbage. Where
she understood that it could do things other than just
simple calculations. She understood the more modern uh, you know
concept of computing um, in that it can be multi purpose,
it can create these you know, have like systems running
(19:05):
in tandem that can do multiple things. The idea of
you know, apps or like individual piece of software that
can run at the same time. Certainly more of a
rudimentary version of that concept, but definitely approaching that in
a really important way. UM. Babbage believed that these machines
would be exclusively used for computing numbers. Uh. But she
(19:26):
had more of a vision. She believed there could be
music involved or like, you know, she she envisioned word processing.
She envisioned the idea of them using being being used
to make sound, whether that's along the lines of the
music box kind of version that I was describing before,
which is very similar to what MIDI ultimately is. MIDDI
is a language, a computer language that that basically is
(19:47):
a set of instructions the different electronic devices can understand
to tell it what to do to play different notes.
She almost foresaw something like that, um processing photographs and
things like that, Like all of these a modern concepts,
she already kind of had her head around them. Yeah,
it's enormously prescient. This level of accuracy and a prediction
(20:11):
is somewhat rare, and it should be acknowledged as such.
I also, I'm not sure the right way to say this.
I vibe with these kind of predictions, and and it's
interesting to me that there are still people who are
so Folks who say that this person's role in history
(20:32):
is overblown are met with responses from other historians who
have studied Aida Lovelace their entire lives, and those folks say,
what's happening now is there's still people in the modern
day who are trying to discredit her achievements. And they say, look,
this doesn't just happen to prominent historical figures like Aida Lovelace.
(20:55):
This happens to women working in tech today, many of
whom are in the audio now and thank you, by
the way for tuning in. As always ridiculous historians. Uh,
people are starting to guess they're they're saying, like, well,
what what happened after this? Because as we found, you know,
history textbooks sometimes teach us that people exist for one
(21:16):
great moment, that it's that one great speech they did,
that one eureka uh second that defines their life. But
that's not true. People are people, just like everyone else.
They have their ups and downs. And some folks say
that because Aida hit this wall in the world of tech,
(21:36):
she may have it may have led her into the
gambling halls. And we do know that in the eighteen
forties she did pick up a gambling habit, and some
people speculate that this gambling habit forced her to secretly
pawn the family's precious stones. I'm gonna have family jewels.
(21:58):
But that feels like it's more euphanism. I think it is.
But but it's an uphanism for a reason. I think
it comes from situations like that is the prize possession
of like you know, your legacy kind of and yeah,
when you're when you're that low that you have to
resort to that, Um, it's definitely a sad, a sad
place to be. Uh. And she, you know, reportedly lost
(22:18):
thousands of pounds betting on horses UM at the EPSOM Derby. UM.
She had relationships, like often people do that get deep
into the gambling world with con men and loan sharky
types you know of the time, who were essentially using her,
uh for her smarts, for some sort of mathematical way
(22:41):
of predicting horse races. Uh. And I think we all
know that that's not a thing. Maybe there's you know,
ways of calculating odds and stuff like that, and like
you know, algorithms that can kind of help guide you
in the right direction. But if someone had it's like
the I always think of the sports Almanac from back
to the few tre two. You know, somebody had that
(23:01):
ability to predict the outcome of sports games, there would
be no rhymer reason to to betting it, wouldn't there.
There'll be no need for it anymore unless that secret
was you know, just kept just by Biff from the past,
you know, who is now a Donald Trump asked figure
living in his high rise keeping the sports on the
neck in a in a under lock and key, And
unfortunately that's not what happened with a. We know their
(23:25):
friendship continued. We know that she met other notable figures
like Charles Dickens. Yes, that Charles Dickens. He was friends
with Babbage. He met Lovelace through her. There's before we
move on from gambling, there's this really cool conspiratorial passing
the book story between her and Babbage, but no one's
actually found the book. It'd be great to see what
(23:47):
that program was, though, wouldn't if they actually were able
to do it. Uh, the book being the book being
some secret code or some secret algorithm that could predict
these outcomes. Yeah. So the idea is that, and you
can you can read some of this in a book
called Lady Byron and Her Daughters. Uh. The idea is
(24:09):
that about once a week, during the height of her gambling,
Lovelace and Babbage would exchange a book that was believed
to contain a program that attempted to predict those results.
But at the same time she's struggling with this gambling,
she's also struggling with her health, which had been a
problem at different points in her adulthood. Uh, it seemed
(24:32):
to take a turn for the worst. In the eighteen
forties she suffered from uterine cancer, and in August of
eighteen fifty two, Charles Dickens, who by this point is
like super famous, he visits. He visits her while she
is ailing, and then she asked him to read some
(24:52):
of his work to her, and so he reads a
scene from a novel called Dombi and Son. Dombi and
Son was published in eighteen and the scene he reads
is the part where spoiler alert, I guess is the
part where the six year old character Paul Dombie dies.
(25:14):
It's kind of somber stuff. Three months after that, Ada
Lovelace herself will will pass away on November two, rewind
ever so slightly well quite quite a ways to her birth.
In the situation with her father, Lord Byron, Um, I
(25:35):
think we made this pretty clear, but just want to
emphasize that they never had a relationship at all. He
was kind of this like you know, specter in her life,
who loomed large in his own right. Um. She was
fascinated with him from afar uh and with his poetry
but for all intents and purposes, her mother's mission to
keep you know, their daughter from becoming like um, you know,
(25:57):
her lecherous uh father worked. She very much led a
life much more in the image of her her mom.
But it's interesting that she still had that fascination and
kind of kept up with him. But it's like you said,
been on his deathbed, Lord Byron expressed some um regrets
you know, over not having had a relationship with his daughter,
who he seemed to also be aware of her reputation
(26:21):
and legacy and the seemed to respect her. But after
her death, she requested to be buried in the Byron
family plot or vault rather, which was inside the church
of St. Mary Magdalen in a very small English town
called Hucknall, and her coffin was placed right beside her father's,
(26:41):
Lord Byron's, and she too passed away at a very
early age. She was only thirty six. Um, I believe
it was the same exact age that Lord Byron died.
Same exact age. Yeah, she was, uh, she was close
to turning thirty seven, but they did. They were the
same age when they passed away, and her mother built
(27:04):
a memorial for her that included a sonnet that Ada
Lovelace had written herself, and that I believe was a
beautiful thing for her to do, given that she had,
you know, spent so much of her daughter's childhood trying
to convince the kid not to write poetry. Uh so
she passes away. Why how did the world deal with
(27:28):
it when this occurred? Well, it may not surprise many
of us in the audience today to note that no
one really acknowledged her contributions for almost a hundred years.
They like, nobody really paid attention to her awesome insightful
notes on the analytical Engine when they were first published.
(27:49):
It wasn't ntil author named B. V. Bowden publishes a
book called Faster Than Thought, a symposium on digital computing machines,
and that's when people start paying attention to Love leases again, tremendously,
tremendously insightful work. Picture her like a mathematical Nostradams. If
(28:11):
no Stradomas ever actually made any successful predictions, which he didn't,
not so much, but but Lovelace absolutely did. And even
in the fifties, you know, like like I said, when
I was talking to Alex and Max's dad, Um the
machines that existed still were very much along the lines
of what Babbage and Lovelace had kind of worked on together,
(28:34):
and still not even close to approaching what potential that
she saw. That wouldn't really happen until you started getting
into the personal computer era, when like individuals can start
using them for more creative endeavors, you know, at least
that part of her predictions, you know, the idea of
using them for music, and using them for multitasking and things,
(28:56):
and to be more of like a staple of like
everyday life instead of relegate it into these like massive
server rooms, you know, and being so prohibitably expensive that
only UM organizations like the U. S. Department of Defense
could afford to house them, which is exactly what they
did in the nineteen seventies. I spent billions of dollars
(29:16):
UM embedding these computer systems with code uh that they
a coding language that they dubbed Ada, and it changed
the trajectory of computer science UM in a very meaningful way. Yeah.
It was actually one of the one of the most
expensive coding projects ever. I think it was the most
(29:37):
expensive coding project up to that time. In the nineteen seventies.
The folks at the Department of Defense in the US
look around and they say, we are spending billions in
nineteen seventies dollars, so even more money today. We are
spending billions on making computing systems. And these computing systems
can't talk with each other. They each have their own language.
(30:00):
We're building a weird tower of babble. So instead they say,
let's let's consolidate all our military computing. Let's save a
little scratch, let's make a language all of these machines
can speak together. And when they arrive at this idea,
which they do follow through with, that's when that language
(30:20):
comes in. There's a U. S. Navy commander named Jack
Cooper who's when they're pitching names for it, he says, well,
how about we name it Ada in honor of Aida
Lovelace in the ninety nine. Everybody looked around and said, yeah,
that's an awesome idea, So good for them. Also, Aida
is still used across the world today for air traffic control,
(30:44):
railroad transit, rockets, even some satellites, military weapons. We don't
know how she would feel about, you know, having a
language named after her used in warfare. But it's still around,
and it's it's definitely less popular now. It's fallen out
of favor because technology is always so progressing so quickly.
(31:07):
But we also like nuclear plants and military operations sometimes
do tend to use outdated uh coading or or computers
because they need to be proprietary, so they're harder to
hack or they're harder to like break into correct correct
for security. And then also another point would be for predictability.
(31:27):
If there are bugs in the program, they've been identified,
you know, in the intervening decades. So this is a
testament to Aida lovelas his life and work, and it's
a testament that not a lot of people can say
that they have achieved, you know what I mean. Everybody
gets a statue, right if you're a leader of old
(31:47):
or your prominent figure. But to get a new kind
of language, a computer language named after you, that's pretty impressive.
That's up there with having your face on the money.
I would say even more important, I think so too
quick footnote, there is an Ada Lovelace Day. In two
thousand nine, a British social media grew named Sue Chairman
(32:09):
Anderson in order to encourage young women to go into
stem fields and all of that. They decided to create
an Ada Lovelace Day. UM that was on October eleven
of each year. UM. And it's weirdly not Ada Lovelace's birthday,
nor is it the day that she died. Um, it's
(32:29):
just the second Tuesday in October because it was convenient. Um.
And one thing I just wanted to say, because I
thought it was really funny. I think I mentioned the
first episode UM a YouTube talk I listened to or
we we listened to about a book that was written
to commemorate the two anniversary of her uh birth and
(32:50):
UM it was had to do with Oxford Press. And
I'm sorry I'm spacing on the name of it right now,
but in the presentation, one of the authors mentioned that
when they had access to all these letters she wrote,
she wasn't very good at keeping track of dates like
she UM oftentimes would would say that a letter was
be dated for like Sunday, November the second, and the
(33:11):
next one would be dated for Monday, November the second.
The punchline of the of the bit that the author
said was and it turns out that that date was
actually a Tuesday. So UM, it's I think fitting that
this date is a little bit arbitrary. I love a
Loveli day, right right right there we go, that's that's
poetic as well. One thing we do want to end
(33:32):
done that we teased earlier in part one is that
when we say Loveliest was prescient and how to how
to sharp mind for future trends, we need to talk
a little bit about the concept of machine consciousness sometimes
called artificial intelligence or AI. Where do you think she
(33:52):
fell on on the side of this argument ridiculous historians? Well, uh,
she was. She was against it. She said, the analytical
engine has no pretensions whatsoever to originate anything. It can
do whatever we know how to order it to perform.
It can follow analysis, but has no power of anticipating
(34:14):
any analytical relations or truths. And so you have to wonder.
You have to wonder how long that prediction and soft
interpreted as a prediction, how long it will hold. Because
I don't know. The whole time we're talking about this,
I I kept wondering what she would think now, what
(34:35):
she would think of the latest innovations. Everybody has a
surveillance device or you know, the majority of people in
the developed world have a surveillance device. Who just call smartphone,
so it'll seem a little more comfortable. Uh. There are
entire multibillion dollar industries based on predicting people's behavior right
based on their past activities, their location, the folks they
(34:59):
roll with. So it's quite possible. I don't know, what
do you what do you think she would think about
the modern world of computing. I think she'd with that
big old brain of hers, probably be able to predict
where we'd be heading, you know another you know, fifty
hundred years from now. Um. It just seemed like she
(35:20):
really was possessed with a certain prescient ability to kind
of just see through, um, the veil, kind of into
into what was next. So I think it would be
very interesting to have a conversation with her, like Bill
and Ted style. UM. I don't want to point out
one thing too. I want to make sure I didn't
come off sounding as though the difference engine or the
analytical engine were successfully built and existed. In the four
(35:44):
It was all conceptual. It was all these papers and
these analyzes of the concept of these machines. But he
never actually got babbaged. Also partly because he was a difficult,
dude never got the project off the ground UM fully UM.
But into thousand two, the London Science Museum UM, with
(36:04):
the under the supervision of Dorn Suede or Swatty UM,
they actually built a fully working, full size difference engine UM.
And it took seventeen years UM and it is absolutely
massive and it represents the completion of this whole legacy
that we're talking about. Obviously, the concepts went on to
(36:28):
feed computing moving forward, but the original you know, invention
never actually was was created until two thousand two. And folks,
I think you can I think you can agree with me.
Noll well, I think you guys will also agree that
maybe the difference engine would have been built in Charles
Babbage's lifetime if he had just let someone else talk
(36:50):
to the people who could have paid for it. So
I think that was a misstep on his You can't
put that on Ada man. That's all you saw, you, Charlie.
Uh yes, and uh you know this story is equally inspiring,
it's equally heartbreaking because we've all heard the old adage
you never get the flowers while you can still smell them. Uh.
(37:14):
And we we be humanity, oh Ada Lovelace tremendous debt.
As we said in the beginning of this series, if
you have a smartphone, if you have a computer, heck,
if you're listening to this podcast, then there's a very
strong argument that you personally oh a little bit of
(37:35):
gratitude towards the one and only Ada Lovelace. Indeed, Um,
and I certainly learned a lot. I knew a little
bit about Aida and her legacy, and a little bit
about Babbage, but not nearly as much as we were
able to dig into on this two part episode. I
hope you all have learned something too, and we are
(37:56):
going to call it a day. This is one for
the history books. As always, thanks to super producer Max Williams.
Special thanks to our returning guest producer Lowell Brilliante Noel.
Can you believe he's stuck with us for a second one?
I can't, Um, but I am for ever his debt
for his patients and uh and and producing acumen. And
(38:17):
also don't forget to check out Lowell's amazing podcast Prodigy,
available now on the IHRT Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever
you get podcasts, wherever you get. That's true, That's true.
And thanks of course also to Alex Williams who uh
rumor has it maybe returning to the show sooner than
later act surprised Big thanks to Christopher hassegda Is Big
(38:38):
Big thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat and of course Noel
Big thanks to you, and I think we can both
say big thanks to Gabe Lousier. Keep wanting to say
one don't cut this part out. I keep wanting to
say the one and only. It just feels so good
to say that when you talk true, it feels good
(38:58):
and it's true you can. These are all like irreplaceable originals,
um all the folks who work with so thanks to
all of our one and only and to you, my friend,
back at you. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
(39:21):
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:28):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer,
Max Williams. Add a very special shout out to our
guest super producer returning again, the one, the only Mr Lowell, Brilliante.
I've been your your nal. And this is part two
of a two part series, isn't it. It is indeed
(00:52):
part two of Ada Lovelace and her journey into mathematics
and computation and you know, standard bearing, trail blazing, all
that good stuff. Where where do we leave off, ben,
if I'm not mistaken, She had just kind of returned
to the fray of of of computer science after a
(01:13):
brief stint in the domestic realm. Yes, after just a
few months after the birth of her third child back
in eighteen thirty nine, Aida decided to dive back into
the world of numerousy and the world of mathematics. And
it's interesting because we mentioned in part one. Will pause,
(01:35):
everybody listen to part one. Do do do Do Do
Do Do Do do do and you're back. So in
part one we're still here in part one. Uh, she
met the man who would become her mentor, Charles Babbage,
and just before she got married in eighteen thirty five
she got married, So a year before then, in eighteen
(01:56):
thirty four, Babbage had finally and to mess around with
something he called not the difference machine, but something he
called an analytical engine. This is the old trope you
might hear of punch cards being used in the first computers, right,
that's right. UM. It was the earliest form of kind
(02:20):
of large mainframe type computer systems that continue to use
punch card systems well into the eighties. I believe, like
you know, big massive UM room filling systems that use
these punch cards to uh instruct the computer on what
to do. UM. I'm a little hazy on exactly how
(02:40):
that works. It's all kind of magic to me and
in some ways, but essentially the punch cards are the instructions.
In this situation, it was very rudimentary UM tasks and
computations that could multiply and divide numbers UM and other
more simplistic data related tasks using these punch cards as
(03:01):
the programming instructions. UM really quickly. But do you remember
back in probably the nineties, maybe the early to mid nineties,
there used to be a chain of computer stores called
babbage Is, was it? You know, always thinking about that
was turn remember if they were computer stores or music stores?
And I'm pretty sure you're right there, Uh they were
computer stores, if I'm not mistaken. Babbage Is ultimately became
(03:27):
game Stop. Babbage Is was the initial um, you know concept,
and then it gradually uh mutated into the game Stop
and movie Stopped and all of the various stops. Um.
But but I might be mistaken, but I think that's right.
It was a very popular chance of stores in the
eighties and nineties, but named after Charles Babbage. I just
(03:47):
always thought it was a funny word when I was
a kid. Didn't founding partner of that or one of
the early investors was Ross Pero, which is a deep
cut for a lot of people. He was one of
the he was one of the politicians in recent US
history who actually got close to being a member of
(04:07):
or candidate for viable third political party spoiler it didn't happen. No,
And he was also one of the you know, more
fledgling candidates that um was quite fun in his um
portrayal on Saturday Night Live. I think it was Dana
Carvey that did Ross Pero and he did the Whole
Life Canna fanish Cana, fantis cana, fanish cana, fanish chap. Anyway,
(04:30):
it was a thing, um, but it's true. So Babbage
at this point has started to develop this system called
the Analytical engine. Um. Initially it was just a concept.
It was these sketches of this massive machine that literally
used you know, mechanical pieces, mechanical components like costs very
much so uh. And again they filled up rooms or
(04:54):
would ultimately go into Philip rooms. What it would become
of this lovelace was essentially the acting as a consultant
on this project. She seemed to understand the idea behind
it or the potential behind it, maybe even more so
than Babbage himself. Yeah, and this is a theme that
we saw earlier in part one of this series. She
(05:16):
saw the potential for uh, for this to be a
representation of what she called poetical science, which goes back
to the earlier conflict with her mother about you know,
math versus poetry. Please don't let my daughter turn into
Lord Byron, because he's you know, kind of out there
(05:37):
so Babbage goes to Turin to promote his work, to
promote his ideas, and while he's promoting this, he realizes
he needs a lot of financial support to make this
trip happen. And Lovelace had already served as the primary
interpreter of these drawing board ideas essentially, and to be clear,
(06:00):
it's the building of the machine that requires a lot
of money, so this is this is kind of a
pitch trip for him as well. That's where he meets
a mathematician with the wonderful name Luigi Fererico Menabrea, and
this guy says, all right, your ideas check out, Charlie,
(06:21):
I am gonna. I'm going to write a paper about
this machine. And the paper gets published in October two
in a Swiss journal. Lovelace translates it from French, and
then while she's translating, she also adds her own notes.
And the paper itself that this guy Luigi writes is
about eight thousand words long, not bad, but the translation
(06:46):
and the commentary that Lovelace creates comes in at about
twenty thousand words, and Charles Pappage is saying, the notes
of the Countess of Lovelace extend to about three times
the length of the original memoir. And uh, he's again
very very impressed with the quality of her thought and
(07:06):
her scholarship. Yeah, it's true, and he certainly sees that
in her. And despite you know, it being a very
chauvinistic and patriarchal world, you know, the society in general,
but also just the idea that men were the only
people that had ideas worth paying attention to. UM. And
you needed to get this Luigi Federico Montabrea to co
(07:29):
sign on it. It wasn't enough for Lovelace to have
done it, even though she obviously could have done it
herself and clearly massively improved upon Um Montabree's ideas, UM
by a significant margin. UM. But her notes were published,
you know, our translation and the notes were published in
eighteen forty three, UM. And according to Lovelace, you know,
(07:49):
scholars and historians, this was her most important contribution to
the burgeoning field of computer science, which really wasn't even
they weren't even calling it that. Actually are are good
friend Alex Williams, who composed our theme. His father, UM
and mother are both computer scientists, and I briefly was
(08:11):
talking to his dad about Lovelace UM and he just
mentioned how you know, they were still using a punch
card systems when he was coming up in you know,
the computer science world, and how early on there was
actually a programming language that was named after Lovelace. It
was called Ada that was used by military UM computer
scientists for military systems. But that you know, like similar
(08:34):
with the whole Hidden Figures film, This like group of
women that were very responsible for kind of cracking a
lot of the science behind UM space travel, but we're
largely relegated to kind of the shadows since the name.
And this is very much the case for Lovely. She
definitely didn't get her do until much much much later UM,
but was clearly one of the most important figures in
(08:55):
the development of this technology, more so even maybe than
the guy who kind of envisioned it. Yeah, and quick
note this will be if for any fellow ridiculous historians
who are also fans of etymology. The original down computer
described a person, not a machine from the sixteen forties,
one who calculates or a reckon er, which I always thought,
(09:17):
I always thought was so fascinating. You're right there, she's
working against tremendous misogyny, she said earlier. In fact, her
translation in her notes when they're published in eighteen forty three,
the authorship is attributed to just a series of initials A, A, L.
And and this is this is kind of a this
(09:38):
kind of a kick in the pants because it is
still considered one of her greatest contributions to to the field.
And she walks through not just the possibilities of how
it could work, but she also walks through the context
leading to its creation. And she specifically shouts out the
(10:00):
Jacquard loom, which was a silk weaving machine and it
could create images using a chain of punched cards and lovelace.
How poetically scientific is this? She says, Look, folks, this
engine that Babbage has made is doing the same thing,
but it's weaving mathematical problems. It's weaving patterns. They're just
(10:23):
nu miracle. She also wrote how it could how it
could work in a specific case test, like, here's an
example of how you would use these punch cards to
create a long sequence. And this outline that she that
she thought up, that she created this is considered to
(10:43):
be the very first computer program, and and she has
this beautiful line where she says, the science of operations,
as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of
itself and has its own abstract truth and value. Chef's kiss. Oh, indeed,
just back to the Jacquard loom really quickly that was
(11:03):
developed by Joseph Mulley Jacquard Um. And to me, this
is a really great way to kind of understand somewhat
how punch cards work. Uh, you know, I think it
was clearly a next level use of this technology when
it started to be used for more difficult you know,
algorithms and mathematical equations solving and things like that. But
(11:25):
it's sort of almost like a player piano or a
music box, where like, if you have a music box,
you create the programming or the instructions for what individual
musical times will be plucked to create a melody by
punching out sequences of notes like on a scale on
a staff that is on a roll of paper, in
the same way that a player piano. You feed these
(11:46):
roles of punched out paper into it, and that blocks
the keys from being played when they shouldn't be played
and allows it to play the keys when they are
supposed to be played. So to me, that's sort of
like a rudimentary understanding of the basis of how punch
cards work. But any computer science folks out there, please
correct me if that's absolutely off base. But that's kind
of how I understand it. But she wanted to take
(12:07):
it even further. Uh. She wanted to weave what would
are called Bernoulli numbers, the sequences of Bernoulli numbers. Um.
And that's exactly what she did. Uh. And that's what
that quote is describing, and that would have been considered
the first computer program. You're absolutely right, ben Um and
s Singer. Uh in his biography of Love Lace wrote,
(12:28):
Ada here is seeking to do nothing less than invent
the science of computing and separate it from the science
of mathematics. What she calls the science of operations is
indeed in effect computing at a time where they didn't
have a name for it. Uh, didn't even understand the
full ramifications of what this would ultimately be, you know,
the Pandora's box for good or bad that this would
(12:50):
open up. She was very aware of that very high
level stuff that wouldn't even come into play for many,
many years, much more so I think than Babbage himself. Yeah,
a language of the world, a language that describes reality,
she she said, so to put a fine point on it.
At one point, she writes, this science constitutes the language
(13:14):
through which alone we can adequately express the great facts
of the natural world. So this is figuring out how
to how to translate reality, and that's that's an amazing thing.
At that level, we are getting to what Arthur C.
(13:34):
Clark famously refers to in his quote about the difference
between science and magic. Right, any science sufficiently advanced may
as well be magic. And this is really what she's doing.
If you look at something called the Ada Initiative, which
(13:55):
is a nonprofit organization that arranges conferencing and training programs
to elevate women working in STEM, you'll see the executive director,
Valerie Aurora, says that Babbage possessed this technical ingenuity, this inventiveness,
but in his partnership with Lovelace, she is the one
(14:17):
who propelled his invention into the world of computing, because
she was the one to see the true potential. There's
an excellent article that talks about this Ada Lovelace First
Tech Visionary by Betsy Murray's which is in The New
York Or from and unlike sad to say, many other
(14:41):
male inventors or scientists, Babbage had absolutely no problem hyping
and supporting Lovelace and her her work and her ability
as a computer scientists. He called her Lady Ferry, He
called her the Enchantress of numbers, and Aida leaned into this.
(15:01):
She once called herself the high Priestess of Babbage's engine,
which is cool. It sounds like it could be really
fun to be a fly on the wall in their conversations.
I agree, and I think it's neat. You know, we're
gonna see this relationship sort of changes a little bit.
And it does appear Babbage and may have been difficult
in some other respects, but he was pretty progressive given
(15:22):
the time and all of the you know, other stuff
that we've been talking about, the kind of patriarchal societal
model and um, all of that stuff and the misogyny
that existed. But um, you know, it's not like he
pressed for her. He definitely associated her with these uh
improvements in the paper, and he wasn't trying to like
brush her aside. But I don't know, Uh, we'll just see,
(15:45):
let's see how things progress. Um, So Lovelace does become
fascinated with the potential for the analytical engine and these algorithms,
which I don't even know if they were calling them
that at the time, but it essentially is what we
would call algorithms today, these pieces of code that are
designed to do like a particular task. Um. Unfortunately, she
(16:06):
didn't continue working with Babbage or wasn't more involved. She
was sort of relegated to the sidelines a little bit. Um.
I think that's maybe where I'm what I'm getting at
is that he definitely listened to her. He hyped her up,
and he you know, gave her a megaphone and a
platform to kind of try out some of the ideas,
but it ultimately was his thing. Right. Yeah, this is
(16:28):
where we see an unfortunate complication in their collaboration. So
in August of eighteen forty three, Lovelace writes a letter
to Babbage and she says, hey, why don't you let
me help you by putting me in charge of anything
related to the analytical project that requires us influencing important people,
(16:54):
kind of like, let me go talk to these folks,
let me go help get some approval, some funding, get
some other assistance. And this was a pretty long letter.
Historians still don't know why, but Babbage, in very terse
terms rejected her offer. You'll see that the best guests
(17:15):
people tend to have is that he approved of her
work in publicizing his engine, but with this particular project
he felt uncomfortable for some reason about letting her be
involved in the project itself. Does that mean maybe he
thought she might outshine him. Did his misogyny come into play?
(17:37):
I don't know. But ever since that point, due impart
to this conflict they had, Oh they stayed friends, by
the way. Part of yeah, conflict they had, you'll find
some folks say that she was not a programmer at all,
but I tend to disagree. Well, yeah, it's interesting. I
think maybe if she had been more involved in the
(17:59):
project itself instead of just kind of relegated to interpreting
and adding some more clarity around that original paper, then
I think she would have become more influential in actual programming.
She certainly had the chops and the imagination, which is
really what that poetical science concept is all about, is
kind of combining those two things. Um, it was Babbage
(18:22):
himself that created the first what essentially could be called
the first operating system or operating instructions uh for the system. Um,
she may well have done a better job. You know,
it seems like it. But I understand what you're saying,
been and I kind of agree that maybe he was
worried that, um, she might have stolen his thunder a
little bit. Um. The thing is not to beat the
(18:45):
dead horse here. She is the one who sort of
understood the potential for this stuff more than Babbage. Where
she understood that it could do things other than just
simple calculations. She understood the more modern uh, you know
concept of computing um, in that it can be multi purpose,
it can create these you know, have like systems running
(19:05):
in tandem that can do multiple things. The idea of
you know, apps or like individual piece of software that
can run at the same time. Certainly more of a
rudimentary version of that concept, but definitely approaching that in
a really important way. UM. Babbage believed that these machines
would be exclusively used for computing numbers. Uh. But she
(19:26):
had more of a vision. She believed there could be
music involved or like, you know, she she envisioned word processing.
She envisioned the idea of them using being being used
to make sound, whether that's along the lines of the
music box kind of version that I was describing before,
which is very similar to what MIDI ultimately is. MIDDI
is a language, a computer language that that basically is
(19:47):
a set of instructions the different electronic devices can understand
to tell it what to do to play different notes.
She almost foresaw something like that, um processing photographs and
things like that, Like all of these a modern concepts,
she already kind of had her head around them. Yeah,
it's enormously prescient. This level of accuracy and a prediction
(20:11):
is somewhat rare, and it should be acknowledged as such.
I also, I'm not sure the right way to say this.
I vibe with these kind of predictions, and and it's
interesting to me that there are still people who are
so Folks who say that this person's role in history
(20:32):
is overblown are met with responses from other historians who
have studied Aida Lovelace their entire lives, and those folks say,
what's happening now is there's still people in the modern
day who are trying to discredit her achievements. And they say, look,
this doesn't just happen to prominent historical figures like Aida Lovelace.
(20:55):
This happens to women working in tech today, many of
whom are in the audio now and thank you, by
the way for tuning in. As always ridiculous historians. Uh,
people are starting to guess they're they're saying, like, well,
what what happened after this? Because as we found, you know,
history textbooks sometimes teach us that people exist for one
(21:16):
great moment, that it's that one great speech they did,
that one eureka uh second that defines their life. But
that's not true. People are people, just like everyone else.
They have their ups and downs. And some folks say
that because Aida hit this wall in the world of tech,
(21:36):
she may have it may have led her into the
gambling halls. And we do know that in the eighteen
forties she did pick up a gambling habit, and some
people speculate that this gambling habit forced her to secretly
pawn the family's precious stones. I'm gonna have family jewels.
(21:58):
But that feels like it's more euphanism. I think it is.
But but it's an uphanism for a reason. I think
it comes from situations like that is the prize possession
of like you know, your legacy kind of and yeah,
when you're when you're that low that you have to
resort to that, Um, it's definitely a sad, a sad
place to be. Uh. And she, you know, reportedly lost
(22:18):
thousands of pounds betting on horses UM at the EPSOM Derby. UM.
She had relationships, like often people do that get deep
into the gambling world with con men and loan sharky
types you know of the time, who were essentially using her,
uh for her smarts, for some sort of mathematical way
(22:41):
of predicting horse races. Uh. And I think we all
know that that's not a thing. Maybe there's you know,
ways of calculating odds and stuff like that, and like
you know, algorithms that can kind of help guide you
in the right direction. But if someone had it's like
the I always think of the sports Almanac from back
to the few tre two. You know, somebody had that
(23:01):
ability to predict the outcome of sports games, there would
be no rhymer reason to to betting it, wouldn't there.
There'll be no need for it anymore unless that secret
was you know, just kept just by Biff from the past,
you know, who is now a Donald Trump asked figure
living in his high rise keeping the sports on the
neck in a in a under lock and key, And
unfortunately that's not what happened with a. We know their
(23:25):
friendship continued. We know that she met other notable figures
like Charles Dickens. Yes, that Charles Dickens. He was friends
with Babbage. He met Lovelace through her. There's before we
move on from gambling, there's this really cool conspiratorial passing
the book story between her and Babbage, but no one's
actually found the book. It'd be great to see what
(23:47):
that program was, though, wouldn't if they actually were able
to do it. Uh, the book being the book being
some secret code or some secret algorithm that could predict
these outcomes. Yeah. So the idea is that, and you
can you can read some of this in a book
called Lady Byron and Her Daughters. Uh. The idea is
(24:09):
that about once a week, during the height of her gambling,
Lovelace and Babbage would exchange a book that was believed
to contain a program that attempted to predict those results.
But at the same time she's struggling with this gambling,
she's also struggling with her health, which had been a
problem at different points in her adulthood. Uh, it seemed
(24:32):
to take a turn for the worst. In the eighteen
forties she suffered from uterine cancer, and in August of
eighteen fifty two, Charles Dickens, who by this point is
like super famous, he visits. He visits her while she
is ailing, and then she asked him to read some
(24:52):
of his work to her, and so he reads a
scene from a novel called Dombi and Son. Dombi and
Son was published in eighteen and the scene he reads
is the part where spoiler alert, I guess is the
part where the six year old character Paul Dombie dies.
(25:14):
It's kind of somber stuff. Three months after that, Ada
Lovelace herself will will pass away on November two, rewind
ever so slightly well quite quite a ways to her birth.
In the situation with her father, Lord Byron, Um, I
(25:35):
think we made this pretty clear, but just want to
emphasize that they never had a relationship at all. He
was kind of this like you know, specter in her life,
who loomed large in his own right. Um. She was
fascinated with him from afar uh and with his poetry
but for all intents and purposes, her mother's mission to
keep you know, their daughter from becoming like um, you know,
(25:57):
her lecherous uh father worked. She very much led a
life much more in the image of her her mom.
But it's interesting that she still had that fascination and
kind of kept up with him. But it's like you said,
been on his deathbed, Lord Byron expressed some um regrets
you know, over not having had a relationship with his daughter,
who he seemed to also be aware of her reputation
(26:21):
and legacy and the seemed to respect her. But after
her death, she requested to be buried in the Byron
family plot or vault rather, which was inside the church
of St. Mary Magdalen in a very small English town
called Hucknall, and her coffin was placed right beside her father's,
(26:41):
Lord Byron's, and she too passed away at a very
early age. She was only thirty six. Um, I believe
it was the same exact age that Lord Byron died.
Same exact age. Yeah, she was, uh, she was close
to turning thirty seven, but they did. They were the
same age when they passed away, and her mother built
(27:04):
a memorial for her that included a sonnet that Ada
Lovelace had written herself, and that I believe was a
beautiful thing for her to do, given that she had,
you know, spent so much of her daughter's childhood trying
to convince the kid not to write poetry. Uh so
she passes away. Why how did the world deal with
(27:28):
it when this occurred? Well, it may not surprise many
of us in the audience today to note that no
one really acknowledged her contributions for almost a hundred years.
They like, nobody really paid attention to her awesome insightful
notes on the analytical Engine when they were first published.
(27:49):
It wasn't ntil author named B. V. Bowden publishes a
book called Faster Than Thought, a symposium on digital computing machines,
and that's when people start paying attention to Love leases again, tremendously,
tremendously insightful work. Picture her like a mathematical Nostradams. If
(28:11):
no Stradomas ever actually made any successful predictions, which he didn't,
not so much, but but Lovelace absolutely did. And even
in the fifties, you know, like like I said, when
I was talking to Alex and Max's dad, Um the
machines that existed still were very much along the lines
of what Babbage and Lovelace had kind of worked on together,
(28:34):
and still not even close to approaching what potential that
she saw. That wouldn't really happen until you started getting
into the personal computer era, when like individuals can start
using them for more creative endeavors, you know, at least
that part of her predictions, you know, the idea of
using them for music, and using them for multitasking and things,
(28:56):
and to be more of like a staple of like
everyday life instead of relegate it into these like massive
server rooms, you know, and being so prohibitably expensive that
only UM organizations like the U. S. Department of Defense
could afford to house them, which is exactly what they
did in the nineteen seventies. I spent billions of dollars
(29:16):
UM embedding these computer systems with code uh that they
a coding language that they dubbed Ada, and it changed
the trajectory of computer science UM in a very meaningful way. Yeah.
It was actually one of the one of the most
expensive coding projects ever. I think it was the most
(29:37):
expensive coding project up to that time. In the nineteen seventies.
The folks at the Department of Defense in the US
look around and they say, we are spending billions in
nineteen seventies dollars, so even more money today. We are
spending billions on making computing systems. And these computing systems
can't talk with each other. They each have their own language.
(30:00):
We're building a weird tower of babble. So instead they say,
let's let's consolidate all our military computing. Let's save a
little scratch, let's make a language all of these machines
can speak together. And when they arrive at this idea,
which they do follow through with, that's when that language
(30:20):
comes in. There's a U. S. Navy commander named Jack
Cooper who's when they're pitching names for it, he says, well,
how about we name it Ada in honor of Aida
Lovelace in the ninety nine. Everybody looked around and said, yeah,
that's an awesome idea, So good for them. Also, Aida
is still used across the world today for air traffic control,
(30:44):
railroad transit, rockets, even some satellites, military weapons. We don't
know how she would feel about, you know, having a
language named after her used in warfare. But it's still around,
and it's it's definitely less popular now. It's fallen out
of favor because technology is always so progressing so quickly.
(31:07):
But we also like nuclear plants and military operations sometimes
do tend to use outdated uh coading or or computers
because they need to be proprietary, so they're harder to
hack or they're harder to like break into correct correct
for security. And then also another point would be for predictability.
(31:27):
If there are bugs in the program, they've been identified,
you know, in the intervening decades. So this is a
testament to Aida lovelas his life and work, and it's
a testament that not a lot of people can say
that they have achieved, you know what I mean. Everybody
gets a statue, right if you're a leader of old
(31:47):
or your prominent figure. But to get a new kind
of language, a computer language named after you, that's pretty impressive.
That's up there with having your face on the money.
I would say even more important, I think so too
quick footnote, there is an Ada Lovelace Day. In two
thousand nine, a British social media grew named Sue Chairman
(32:09):
Anderson in order to encourage young women to go into
stem fields and all of that. They decided to create
an Ada Lovelace Day. UM that was on October eleven
of each year. UM. And it's weirdly not Ada Lovelace's birthday,
nor is it the day that she died. Um, it's
(32:29):
just the second Tuesday in October because it was convenient. Um.
And one thing I just wanted to say, because I
thought it was really funny. I think I mentioned the
first episode UM a YouTube talk I listened to or
we we listened to about a book that was written
to commemorate the two anniversary of her uh birth and
(32:50):
UM it was had to do with Oxford Press. And
I'm sorry I'm spacing on the name of it right now,
but in the presentation, one of the authors mentioned that
when they had access to all these letters she wrote,
she wasn't very good at keeping track of dates like
she UM oftentimes would would say that a letter was
be dated for like Sunday, November the second, and the
(33:11):
next one would be dated for Monday, November the second.
The punchline of the of the bit that the author
said was and it turns out that that date was
actually a Tuesday. So UM, it's I think fitting that
this date is a little bit arbitrary. I love a
Loveli day, right right right there we go, that's that's
poetic as well. One thing we do want to end
(33:32):
done that we teased earlier in part one is that
when we say Loveliest was prescient and how to how
to sharp mind for future trends, we need to talk
a little bit about the concept of machine consciousness sometimes
called artificial intelligence or AI. Where do you think she
(33:52):
fell on on the side of this argument ridiculous historians? Well, uh,
she was. She was against it. She said, the analytical
engine has no pretensions whatsoever to originate anything. It can
do whatever we know how to order it to perform.
It can follow analysis, but has no power of anticipating
(34:14):
any analytical relations or truths. And so you have to wonder.
You have to wonder how long that prediction and soft
interpreted as a prediction, how long it will hold. Because
I don't know. The whole time we're talking about this,
I I kept wondering what she would think now, what
(34:35):
she would think of the latest innovations. Everybody has a
surveillance device or you know, the majority of people in
the developed world have a surveillance device. Who just call smartphone,
so it'll seem a little more comfortable. Uh. There are
entire multibillion dollar industries based on predicting people's behavior right
based on their past activities, their location, the folks they
(34:59):
roll with. So it's quite possible. I don't know, what
do you what do you think she would think about
the modern world of computing. I think she'd with that
big old brain of hers, probably be able to predict
where we'd be heading, you know another you know, fifty
hundred years from now. Um. It just seemed like she
(35:20):
really was possessed with a certain prescient ability to kind
of just see through, um, the veil, kind of into
into what was next. So I think it would be
very interesting to have a conversation with her, like Bill
and Ted style. UM. I don't want to point out
one thing too. I want to make sure I didn't
come off sounding as though the difference engine or the
analytical engine were successfully built and existed. In the four
(35:44):
It was all conceptual. It was all these papers and
these analyzes of the concept of these machines. But he
never actually got babbaged. Also partly because he was a difficult,
dude never got the project off the ground UM fully UM.
But into thousand two, the London Science Museum UM, with
(36:04):
the under the supervision of Dorn Suede or Swatty UM,
they actually built a fully working, full size difference engine UM.
And it took seventeen years UM and it is absolutely
massive and it represents the completion of this whole legacy
that we're talking about. Obviously, the concepts went on to
(36:28):
feed computing moving forward, but the original you know, invention
never actually was was created until two thousand two. And folks,
I think you can I think you can agree with me.
Noll well, I think you guys will also agree that
maybe the difference engine would have been built in Charles
Babbage's lifetime if he had just let someone else talk
(36:50):
to the people who could have paid for it. So
I think that was a misstep on his You can't
put that on Ada man. That's all you saw, you, Charlie.
Uh yes, and uh you know this story is equally inspiring,
it's equally heartbreaking because we've all heard the old adage
you never get the flowers while you can still smell them. Uh.
(37:14):
And we we be humanity, oh Ada Lovelace tremendous debt.
As we said in the beginning of this series, if
you have a smartphone, if you have a computer, heck,
if you're listening to this podcast, then there's a very
strong argument that you personally oh a little bit of
(37:35):
gratitude towards the one and only Ada Lovelace. Indeed, Um,
and I certainly learned a lot. I knew a little
bit about Aida and her legacy, and a little bit
about Babbage, but not nearly as much as we were
able to dig into on this two part episode. I
hope you all have learned something too, and we are
(37:56):
going to call it a day. This is one for
the history books. As always, thanks to super producer Max Williams.
Special thanks to our returning guest producer Lowell Brilliante Noel.
Can you believe he's stuck with us for a second one?
I can't, Um, but I am for ever his debt
for his patients and uh and and producing acumen. And
(38:17):
also don't forget to check out Lowell's amazing podcast Prodigy,
available now on the IHRT Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever
you get podcasts, wherever you get. That's true, That's true.
And thanks of course also to Alex Williams who uh
rumor has it maybe returning to the show sooner than
later act surprised Big thanks to Christopher hassegda Is Big
(38:38):
Big thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat and of course Noel
Big thanks to you, and I think we can both
say big thanks to Gabe Lousier. Keep wanting to say
one don't cut this part out. I keep wanting to
say the one and only. It just feels so good
to say that when you talk true, it feels good
(38:58):
and it's true you can. These are all like irreplaceable originals,
um all the folks who work with so thanks to
all of our one and only and to you, my friend,
back at you. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
(39:21):
favorite shows.
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